Destiny, Kamma, Syncretism

Or Metamorphosis 3.

In between my first work as a steelworks labourer and my enlistment in the Australian army, I lived in Sydney and attended meditation classes taught by a Thai Buddhist monk - Phra Samai.

That was 1979. At the end of my 3-year enlistment I was hitchiking between youth hostels in Northern New South Wales for my annual leave.

In the notorious centre of counter-culture in Australia, Nimbin, I found a flyer on a bulletin board about a monastery that ran meditation courses.

I finished my leave and completed my discharge from the army in late 1983. There was a ten-day retreat at the monastery, which I attended. Turns out that the Abbot, Phra Khantipalo, was a colleague of Phra Samai.

Four years and a couple hundred kilometres of travel and I had come back to the same Thai Theravadin Forest tradition.

Was this my destiny? Or was it my past actions (kamma) that allowed me to find the Buddha's teachings again? Or did a bohdisattva or deva guide me?

Since 1983 I have been back to Wat Buddha-Dhamma in 1987, '95, '98, '03, and 06. In between, life has been up and down in the way that lives are.

Not that I'm complaining. The Dhamma has been very good for me. Not that I need to know why, really.